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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28353300">night call</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones'>erebones</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>First Kiss, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Original Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:13:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28353300</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>a commission for my friend! the characters within belong to their respective creators.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Male Character/Original Male Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>night call</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The clock on the mantle calls the hour at half-two in the morning, but the private chambers of Nym Dreneld are still lit with gilded candlelight. Even as the city sleeps around him, the sorcerer’s mind is brightly occupied with a new project, and the thought of sleep is far from his mind.</p><p>His patron is quite generous with her library. The evidence is all around him, stacked in precarious piles and fanned across his desk and even on the floor. The Lady has her own tasks for him, of course, but in the gaps between Nym’s work and tutoring, all his free time is his own to spend as he wishes. And what he wishes is to pore over old texts and cross-reference aged scrolls seeking knowledge to add to his already impressive spellcrafting acumen.</p><p>Sometime around three it begins to rain. Nym shuffles off the heavy coil of concentration and rises from his desk to open the shutter. The tall, lancet windows in his study all face the front of the manor house, an imposing facade that overlooks the glittering city from its grand appointment on the hill; all but one. This window looks out onto the little side-garden that is the particular fancy of his employer’s young daughter, a tangled bramble of runaway roses and heavy strands of ivy mingled with blue-faced morning bells and sweet woodruff. The aroma lifts to his nose with the onset of the late summer drizzle, and he shuts his eyes to better let it sweep the cobwebs from his brain.</p><p>A clatter sounds from down below, the faintest <em>clink</em> of stone on stone. Nym goes still as a statue. His eyes are muddled from the candlelight, turning the darkened garden to little more than smears of dark paint on a rain-wet canvas, but he has other senses at his disposal. With a quiet hum swallowed to the back of his throat, he shuts his eyes and lets a gentle spell brim to life beneath his skin—</p><p>“<em>Oomph. </em>Fuck.”</p><p>Nym’s eyes snap open and the spell dies, leaving him half-cocked and short-tempered as he braces his hands against the wet stone sill and peers out. “What in the bloody <em>blazes</em> are you doing?”</p><p>Out of the dreary dark, hands curled in the cracks between one cobble and the next, a sullen, hulking drowned rat of a man blinks up at him, one eye severely blackened and the other glaring like flinted amber in the light from Nym’s room. “Climbing into your chambers. What does it look like?”</p><p>There’s not much he can say to that. It’s the truth, after all. “Well—I—” he sputters, smearing dapples of rainwater from the front of his robes. “Don’t take your time about it, or you’ll wake the whole house and I’ll have to explain to Her Grace why an <em>assassin</em> is breaking into her home in the dead of night without so much as a by-your-leave—”</p><p>Caine continues to climb, ignoring his tirade, and finally swings one leg over the sill. Nym swallows his complaints at the sight of him, now fully illuminated in the glow of his candles.</p><p>He’s rain-drenched, dark hair slicked back from a stern brow and dripping from curled-up ends into his collar, which does nothing to hide the shallow cut in his cheekbone and the bruising around one eye. Blood stains his leather greaves—not his own, Nym privately hopes—and blackens one sleeve, with another gash slashed into the snug weave of his breeches.</p><p>“You look terrible,” Nym says, and hopes for a rebuttal.</p><p>“Not as bad as I feel.”</p><p><em>Hells.</em> “Come here. Out of the rain.” Cold fear pools in his stomach, clipping his sentences to short barbs as Nym gets under Caine’s uninjured arm and helps him to the velvet settee. Blood and rainwater and mud seep instantly into the rich green fabric, but it’s nothing he can’t fix later with a snap of his fingers and a thought. “Where does it hurt?”</p><p>Caine shoots him a quick, warm look from under his brows. “Worried you, have I?”</p><p>“Of course you have! Looking like you just crawled out of a sewer—you didn’t, did you?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Good. I would fear for the state of your veins, otherwise.” Nym hesitates before setting upon the fastenings of Caine’s leather cuirass, but the other man does not attempt to dissuade him. “You didn't answer my question.”</p><p>“Eye stings a bit. And my shoulder—ah!”</p><p>Nym freezes. The blood on his sleeve isn’t from Caine’s arm, he sees now. “There’s an arrow sticking out of you,” he says, more calmly than he feels. “Poisoned?”</p><p>“Nah. Wouldn’t have made it this far otherwise.” Caine cracks his neck with a slow side to side of his head, jaw flexing as he grits his teeth. “I’m ready. Pull it.”</p><p>“Calm yourself. I’m not going to maul you any more than I absolutely must.” Nym discards Caine’s wet cloak and slips into his adjoining bedchamber. It’s the work of a moment to pour a fresh pitcher of water into a basin and heat it. Back in his study, he sets it on the side table and brandishes a spark at his fingertips. “I’m going to numb the area. Hold still.”</p><p>Caine has no ready quip for him this time. His mouth is drawn, his complexion grey, and Nym wonders frantically how much blood he’s already lost. <em>He climbed up to my fourth-floor window, surely he can’t be that bad off.</em></p><p><em>Yes, climbed it with an arrow sticking out of his shoulder</em>, retorts the more cynical part of him.</p><p>Nym clamps down on the internal dialogue and works his fingers delicately beneath the collar of Caine’s armor to numb the area. Caine flinches briefly, then settles. His clenched jaw eases slightly. “Better?” Nym murmurs. A brief nod is his only response. “All right. Try and hold still.”</p><p>He’s never pulled an arrowhead out of someone before. Arguably he’s done worse things in his life, but always at a nice, pristine distance from the ugly parts. This is up close and personal, with the consequences spelled out right before his eyes: a stifled grunt of pain, a rather horrid tearing sensation, and a little gout of blood that seeps into Caine’s shirt and somehow, horribly, finds its way onto Nym’s fingertips.</p><p>“Well that wasn’t so bad,” Nym says, still with that eerily calm voice that almost sounds like it’s coming from someone else. He drops the broken-off shaft into the bowl of hot water, trading it for a damp cloth that he presses hard to Caine’s shoulder despite the growl in his throat. “Don’t you bark at me. You came here for assistance, so that’s what I’m providing.”</p><p>“And I am—eternally grateful,” Caine forces out through gritted teeth. After a moment or two he relaxes slightly. “Truly,” he adds, softer this time. Nym looks away.</p><p>“Can you hold this? We need to get you out of these filthy clothes.”</p><p>Caine silently holds the compress to his own shoulder, and Nym sets to disrobing him. It’s an awkward task, but Caine is as stoic as ever, and makes minimal fuss as Nym pries him out of his protective gear and cuts away the ruined shirt.</p><p>“I’ll replace it,” he says quickly as he throws the soiled garment into the wastebin, though he doesn’t know why—the state of Caine’s shirt is hardly <em>his</em> fault.</p><p>Caine seems more at ease now that he’s free of the cold and damp—at least from the waist up—and he reclines against the low back of the couch with a minute flexion of his stomach muscles. He’s hairier under his clothes than Nym had pictured. Not that he’d pictured anything of the sort! Of course not. With a brusque throat-clearing, Nym rescues the bloodied compress and rinses it out.</p><p>“You should really have your shoulder looked at by a physician,” he says as he dabs slowly-clotting blood from the hole left by the arrow. By some miracle it doesn’t seem to have struck anything vital, but even so. Men are not meant to have <em>holes</em> in them like this.</p><p>“Can’t you just… you know.” Caine twiddles his fingers in midair. “Magic it shut?”</p><p>Nym gives him a scathing look. “The body is an incredibly complex and multifaceted machine that requires years of study to understand. I have not, as a rule, made a study of <em>magicking things shut</em>.” He rinses out the rag again and moves to some of the shallow cuts scattered across the rest of his body. A particularly nasty one has already crusted over on his chest, and Nym spends a considerable amount of time dabbing the area with the damp cloth until the reddish-black scab is little more than a fine red line.</p><p>“Well,” Caine says lowly. “What’s the prognosis, doctor?”</p><p>Nym feels himself flaming hot under his robes and snatches his hands away. “Considerably better than when you arrived, though there’s always the danger of your arm falling off.”</p><p>Caine chuckles, an unfairly deep sound that thrums somewhere deep in his chest. “I’m sorry for worrying you.”</p><p>“You didn’t worry me,” Nym snaps automatically, before realizing how ridiculous that sounds. “I mean—” He reaches out a shaking hand and rests it on Caine’s shoulder, just to the side of the arrow wound. “I just… stay here, would you? I’m going to get some bandages.”</p><p>He doesn’t look back, but he can feel Caine’s eyes on him all the way to the door. The hallway is like an icebox after the unbearable warmth of his study. He lets it sting his face and shake him from his odd stupor as he steals downstairs and finds Arlyn already preparing the dough for tomorrow’s—today’s?—baking.</p><p>“I need some herbs,” he says, bypassing a greeting entirely. Arlyn is accustomed to his odd hours and odder requests, and doesn’t bat an eye at his vague description of what he needs. She <em>does </em>bat an eye at his sleeves, which are dappled with blood, but plies him with a roll of gauze and a sachet of fresh herbs for a poultice, and asks no questions.</p><p>By the time he returns to Caine’s side, he’s feeling much less flustered, more in control—but all that changes in an instant. While he was away, Caine had shed his boots and belt and various hidden weapons, and now lays fully on the settee, one leg hanging off, dressed only in skin-fitted breeches that leave very little to the imagination. His hair has come fully loose from its knot and spills in damp waves over his shoulders. His eyes are closed, but Nym has no illusions; Caine never lets down his guard, even with someone he appears to trust.</p><p>“I’m going to need you to sit up for me,” he says, depositing his supplies on the bedside table, “in a minute or two.”</p><p>Caine squints one eye open. “Why?”</p><p>“So I can bind the hole in your shoulder.”</p><p>The eye shuts again, but Nym still feels himself being watched as he grinds the herbs into a paste and conjures a bit of snow in the palm of his hand to soothe Caine’s bruised eye. Caine holds still for this part, and quietly Nym watches as the crystalline flakes melt to tiny pearls, flecks of water that catch in his long eyelashes like morning dew on a spider’s pristine web.</p><p>“Now up,” Nym commands softly. Caine obeys, with a little help, and it takes all of Nym’s not inconsiderable powers of concentration to focus on wrapping his friend’s shoulder instead of staring at his chest. He succeeds. Mostly. “I’m afraid your tattoo might be a bit… disrupted,” he says when the last knot is tied. He traces the ink in question, the prong of one stately antler, now bisected by the fine line he’s painstakingly cleaned before. “But I suppose you knew the risk when you had it done.”</p><p>“It’s not my first scar,” Caine says quietly. “Nor will it be my last.” His hand comes up and finds the back of Nym’s, smoothing his palm flat against his chest. Nym holds his breath. “Thank you. For patching me up. You could have easily turned me away, and you’d be well within your rights.”</p><p>“Of course I couldn’t turn you away,” Nym blusters, but his flippant tone falls flat, veering dangerously toward <em>sincere</em>. It’s the fault of Caine’s warm skin beneath his hand, the feel of his heartbeat scouring away pretense until all Nym has to give is perfect candor. “I know better than to ask that you don’t make this a habit,” he says, reining himself in, “so I will simply say: despite the terrible inconvenience to myself, I hope you will come to me when you need me. I’d rather you stain my couch than bleed out in some sewer somewhere.”</p><p>Caine’s eyes twinkle faintly, but he doesn’t refute the <em>sewer</em> remark. “I’m finding,” he murmurs, “that I need you far more often than I can justify.”</p><p>Nym blushes, and doesn’t bother to hide it. Damn this man! Where on earth did he learn to sweet-talk like this? “Then I am at your disposal. But please do try not to get stabbed during the sunlit hours, or I’ll have a lot of explaining to do to my patroness.”</p><p>“I’ll try.” Caine’s other hand comes up to nudge beneath Nym’s chin, lifting his face. “Look at me.”</p><p>“I’ve <em>been</em> looking at you,” Nym protests.</p><p>“At my chest, yes. No, don’t splutter at me.” Caine’s calloused thumb traces the edge of Nym’s jaw, unfairly gentle. “I want you to look me in the eye when I kiss you.”</p><p>Nym is not often speechless, but he has no words for this. Perhaps his interest has not been as thickly veiled as he imagined. Perhaps he has noticed Caine’s eyes lingering, the warmth of his regard like a small coal hot in his breast. But he takes great pride in maintaining the pseudo-professional distance between them, the give and take of an awkward, blossoming friendship. Caine is about to ruin all of it. And Nym is going to let him.</p><p>Caine’s beard is the first thing he notices, even before his lips. It’s softer than it looks, but not as soft as he’d imagined in his private, late-night musings. It scratches softly at Nym’s chin and upper lip as Caine captures his lips with his own. Nym should push him away. He can’t afford distractions, or risking his life—his very livelihood—to the hands of a deadly assassin.</p><p>The kiss does not break. The thoughts in Nym’s head slow and swirl, not because of magic, but because of the gentlemanly slip of tongue against his lower lip, the strong, broad hands around his waist. His light summer robes suddenly feel unbearably heavy and hot, but when he tries to shrug the outermost layer off his shoulders, Caine pulls away, and that is unacceptable.</p><p>“Lean back,” Nym says hoarsely. Caine does so, instantly. Nym throbs with heat and wanting at the swift obedience, but that’s too complex a thought for the desire prickling beneath his skin. He stands and fumbles free of his robes, and the cool, wet air from the open window feels divine on the bared V of his chest, his stocking feet. “I’m going to sit on your lap,” he announces formally. “If you’d rather I didn’t, now is the time to say so.”</p><p>Caine doesn’t respond either way, not in words. He just leans back against the settee, knees spread, and offers a gleaming half-smile and a pat to his thigh.</p><p>Their mouths meet again before Nym has even settled astride him, but Caine gets a grip on his thighs and he thinks he’s never felt more stable. His undershirt slips off one shoulder and suddenly there’s a hot mouth against his neck, teeth nibbling the long line of his throat. He whimpers and digs desperate fingers into Caine’s shoulders—</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>.”</p><p>“Oh gods, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Nym traces frost-chilled fingers over Caine’s injury, and is rewarded when the creases of pain soften from his face. “Are you all right?”</p><p>“I’m fine.” Caine kisses him sweetly, distracting him from concern. “I want to feel you.”</p><p>His voice is even lower, now, rough around the edges like torn parchment. But his tongue is sweet and slick, and Nym finds himself craving it, pressing nearer to get a better taste. He squirms in Caine’s lap and is rewarded with a low, throaty groan and a distinctive bulge rubbing up against his cunt.</p><p>“Funny way to say thank you,” he teases. Caine has found the garters holding up his stockings, and it only takes a moment to slip the catches free and bare his legs to the cool air of the room. But Nym does not shiver, though the fire that blazed in the hearth earlier has dwindled, cowed by the gusts swarming in from the open window; Caine’s broad hand has found the warmth between his legs and stokes it, strengthening the spark until it catches and becomes a crackling blaze that sizzles throughout his entire body.</p><p>“Can you blame me for being appreciative?” Caine asks calmly, as though he doesn’t have two fingers testing the limits of Nym’s hole.</p><p>Nym bites a curse into his shoulder and fumbles open Caine’s breeches, still damp from the night’s exertions. The fingers inside him curl and beckon, and Nym allows himself to be directed, to tug Caine’s drawers apart and plunge a hand within to find his prize waiting, hot and eager. Caine is stoic still, but a fine tremor runs through his body at that touch. Nym smiles.</p><p>“I suppose not.” The prick in his hand is as big as he’d hoped for, matching the man beneath him in both height and girth. Though it pains him to lean away from Caine’s hand, he does so, hoping for a better look. <em>Hells.</em> “The bedroom?”</p><p>Caine’s eyes glow in the candlelight. “Aye.”</p><p>If his office was chilled, his boudoir is colder still, with nothing but ashes in the hearth and cold sheets that shock his heated skin when Caine flings him unceremoniously upon them. But it’s refreshing—Nym breathes it in, great sweet gulps of it as Caine kicks off the rest of his clothes and burrows between his legs.</p><p>“You—!”</p><p>Caine lifts his head an inch or two, bearded chin still brushing near the core of him. <em>Impertinent.</em> “Shall I stop?”</p><p>“Absolutely the fuck you shan’t.”</p><p>“Tell me to, if you wish.” Caine takes his bejeweled hand, kissing the knuckles one by one. “I am yours to command.”</p><p>Nym harrumphs. “Are you quite comfortable on your stomach, with your injury?”</p><p>“I am.”</p><p>“Then my <em>command</em>,” Nym says, weaving his fingers into Caine’s damp hair, “is to proceed. Thoroughly, until I tell you to stop and put your cock in me instead. Clear?”</p><p>“Crystal.”</p><p>This time when Caine bows his head, Nym doesn’t stop him. Instead he tips his head back into the pillow and sighs with exquisite relief as Caine’s clever mouth works him over, licking and suckling at him, fingers marking delicate blue bruises to the insides of his thighs. Nym quivers and clutches at the sheets, each breath loud as a trumpet in the quiet room. Caine doesn’t hold back—he plies his tongue like an expert craftsman, a jeweler bending silver and gemstones to his will. When his tongue curls just so against him for the third time in a row, Nym shatters and cries out, gasping and quivering in oversensitivity.</p><p>But, true to his word, Caine does not relent. It’s excruciating, in the best possible way. Every nerve feels flayed, every inch of skin ablaze. Nym curses as he wriggles free of his shirt, and even then Caine remains, devouring him, unbothered when Nym’s thighs squeeze around his ears in his efforts to completely disrobe.</p><p>“Enough,” Nym barks at last, voice ragged, having screamed aloud through the last two orgasms bestowed on him by Caine’s wicked tongue. He throws the crumpled shirt aside and reaches for Caine instead. “Come to me.”</p><p>Caine obeys quietly, only a slight grimace betraying his discomfort as he crawls up Nym’s body. Nym wipes the slick off his lower lip with his thumb.</p><p>“Lie back.”</p><p>“I am perfectly capable of—”</p><p>“I said: <em>lie back.</em>”</p><p>Caine’s bulk and breadth is obscene in the fine silks of Nym’s bed. The only light is what little streams through the open door from his study, but a snap of his fingers is all it takes to light the candles by the bed. By their illumination, Nym straddles his waist and leans down to brush their lips together.</p><p>“Allow me,” he murmurs, “to thank <em>you</em>.”</p><p>Caine’s eyes crease at the corners, and his hands are warm and gentle as they caress Nym’s thighs. “For what?”</p><p>“Hmm. Let me think.” Another kiss, lingering this time. “Your mouth.” <em>Kiss</em>. “Your tongue.” <em>Kiss</em>, hand to chest, lips to stubbled cheek. “Your incomparable beauty.”</p><p>“Nym—”</p><p>“But not, I think,” Nym chides, “your love of interrupting me at every turn.”</p><p>The gleam of Caine’s smile is sharpened by Nym’s hand around his prick. “How else am I to get a word in edgewise?”</p><p>“Oh-<em>ho</em>. He talks back.” Nym eases back, then forward again. The plump head of Caine’s dick makes a pleasant sound as it slides between his folds, up to nudge his clit, then back to drag his slick along his perineum.</p><p>Beneath him, Caine shivers. “Do you rescind your compliments about my mouth, then?”</p><p>Still so fierce, even laid docile upon the bed, submitting to Nym’s pleasure. Nym bows, lips brushing together. “Never.”</p><p>The weight of Caine in his hand had been pleasing enough, but inside Nym’s body the pleasure is multiplied a hundredfold. Nym holds his breath to keep from embarrassing himself with a whimper. It makes no difference—his desperation is writ on his face, in the helpless jerk of his hips as his body seeks more without bothering to ask for permission. For the first time in a long time, Nym lets it happen. Lets his spine undulate of its own accord, lets his lungs heave for breath as he rides Caine’s dick as though the very hounds of hell are after him. It is appalling, embarrassing, even terrifying to let himself go this way. But Caine’s expression of quiet admiration puts his doubts to rest, and his eyes fall shut as he chases the peak one final time.</p><p>A quiet whine escapes him at the very end, stifled by Caine’s chest hair. He grinds in place to make the sweet stinging shudders last, and then stills, breathing hard. “Have you—”</p><p>Caine’s harsh breaths interrupt him, and Nym lifts his head to watch the pleasure play out across his normally stoic face. The crease of his brows like this is the most beautiful thing he’s never seen, Nym decides—and he has almost enough delicious afterglow still lingering to not be terrified of the implications.</p><p>“Well,” Nym begins to say, but a look from Caine dries up whatever bluster he’d been about to make. Not a stern, reprimanding look, but a look of such peace and admiration that Nym’s chest tightens and he almost misses the sensation of a softening prick sliding out, leaving him bereft. Nym hesitates, then kisses him, taking care not to put excess weight on his injured shoulder. “Do you need anything?” he asks quietly. “Water? Wine?”</p><p>“Water would be good.” Caine watches him rise from the bed without shame, laying in mussed sheets with his dick still wet and his skin glowing from exertion. “And your company tonight.”</p><p>Nym goes to the sideboard and pretends to be absorbed in the difficult task of pouring a cup of water from the pitcher there. “Whatever shall my patroness say, if your presence is discovered?”</p><p>“I don’t know. But whatever opinion she has, I’m sure you can manage her.” Caine cocks an eyebrow at him. “Unless you’d prefer to relegate me to the couch, injured as I am—”</p><p>“Oh, calm down.” Nym slams the cup on the bedside table and looks at him, hands on hips, quietly enjoying the way Caine’s eyes slide over his naked form. “I’m not <em>relegating</em> you anywhere, and if you try to climb out the window before dawn I shall have the guards after you. Understand?”</p><p>Caine smirks and folds his arms behind his head. Settling in. <em>Bastard</em>. “Perfectly, serrah.”</p><p>“Well, good.” Nym looks a moment more, then climbs into bed. Caine gives him his space, but the warmth of him seeps through the bedding anyway, and Nym curls into his side without a second thought. The opinions of his patroness—and, more terrifying, the staff—can wait until morning.</p>
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